I am new to DVD. Never had it or used it.

Lately, while browsing for a DVD recorder I see TV tuner cards that
allow you to put movies on CD. Is this the card that does this or is
it strictly the software that allows this?

If I want to use CD instead of DVD what do I need to look for to
accomplish it?
I would be interested because of the price of DVDs and the fact that I
already have a CD recorder but not a DVD recorder.

What are the other advantages and disadvantages other that the obvious
larger storage capacity of DVDs?

(E-Mail Removed) (Daryl Helwig) wrote in
news:(E-Mail Removed):

> Is this the card that does this or is
> it strictly the software that allows this?

Mostly Software. There are other cards that will convert it directly to mpeg
format for you but these are about 5x the price of a software decoder based
card.

You can store 60mins of MPEG1 VCD quality on CD or 60mins of MPEG2, DVD
quality on a DVD 4.7GB. Depends on what you require in terms of quality.

Daryl Helwig wrote:
> I am new to DVD. Never had it or used it.
>
> What are the other advantages and disadvantages other that the obvious
> larger storage capacity of DVDs?

www.dvdrhelp.com


-WD

Apparently video is like audio, in that it comes in many differant
formats. I understand from what you are saying, that when putting
video on a CD it must in MPEG1...Correct? What other formats are
there? The type of format determines the quality, right? Will MPEG1
provide a decent image for a beginner who doesn't want to spend much
money right now?


"Psi-Tau Paladin" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news:<4025fa45$0$28867$(E-Mail Removed)>...
> (E-Mail Removed) (Daryl Helwig) wrote in
> news:(E-Mail Removed):
>
> > Is this the card that does this or is
> > it strictly the software that allows this?
>
> Mostly Software. There are other cards that will convert it directly to mpeg
> format for you but these are about 5x the price of a software decoder based
> card.
>
> You can store 60mins of MPEG1 VCD quality on CD or 60mins of MPEG2, DVD
> quality on a DVD 4.7GB. Depends on what you require in terms of quality.

VCD (mpeg-1, 80min) and SVCD (mpeg-2, 40min) are well supported on recent DVD
players. VCD is comparable to VHS, SVCD is almost as good as DVD.

Some players do DivX and WM, which depend on bitrate.

"Daryl Helwig" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> Apparently video is like audio, in that it comes in many differant
> formats. I understand from what you are saying, that when putting
> video on a CD it must in MPEG1...Correct? What other formats are
> there? The type of format determines the quality, right? Will MPEG1
> provide a decent image for a beginner who doesn't want to spend much
> money right now?

(E-Mail Removed) (Daryl Helwig) wrote in
news:(E-Mail Removed):

> I understand from what you are saying, that when putting
> video on a CD it must in MPEG1...Correct?
No, just that if you put MPEG2 quality onto a cd, you probably will only
get about 5mins of it! There are different qualities, but it can be
something in the order of 4MB/sec.

So if you want to put a reasonable quantity of movie or show onto a CD it
should be in mpeg1 or one of the more compressed formats. Bear in mind
though, if you don't have a fast computer, you will probably lose frames
(jittery movie) if you use the compressed formats.

Just as an example, I have a xp2000 (1.6GHz athlon), with 512 RAM it it
consumes ~20 when recording on MPEG1 ~40% resources on MPEG2 and close to
100 + dropped frames using XVID when capturing from tv.

> What other formats are
> there? The type of format determines the quality, right? Will MPEG1
> provide a decent image for a beginner who doesn't want to spend much
> money right now?
I think if you are just recoding them just to watch later so you don't miss
the show, VCD (MPEG1) quality will do just fine. If you want high quality
capture, then you may want to use a hardware solution. The software
solutions that I have researched tend to drop frames after a while. Your
milelage may vary.